


I’ve Got Pictures to Prove I Was There

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, olicity breakup angst, plus some s1 s2 s3 thrown in there, post 4x16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6383614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity used to text Oliver when she got home safe for the night. Now that they’re apart, he wishes more than anything that she’d do that again.</p><p>"If he can’t be by her side, he’d settle for the daily reminder, the reassurance that she’s safe. Maybe a morbid part of him is looking to prove he was right all along about her being better off without him."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I’ve Got Pictures to Prove I Was There

_Post 4x16 Olicity retrospection - Inspired by[this Tumblr post](http://theshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com/post/141810246429/yellowflicker09011996-honorthedeadbyfighting) from @deadlybingo.   
_

_Title from “[Out of Reach](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DN-RdmyW5xRM&t=ZmZhZjBkMDgyNWIyZTIzNjQ5MTE4MzYzNDJkZDMyYWM5MGYwMmZmYyxTdHZlcHNMcw%3D%3D)” by The Get Up Kids._

**I’ve Got Pictures to Prove I Was There**

Oliver’s not sure when it started, exactly. Maybe it was the Dodger. It seems like that’s when a lot of things in his life changed for good. And for the better.

It must have been after a big scare, something significant and bone-rattling. That’s probably why he doesn’t remember asking the first time. She must have agreed. That’s probably why he kept asking.

“Text me when you get home safe?”

For a month or two, he’d ask her right before she left the lair for the night, rushing the words together so they came out like one big nervous jumble. Felicity’s response would vary by the kind of evening they’d had – sometimes she’d roll her eyes playfully, sometimes she’d barely nod, sometimes it was just a simple word of acknowledgement – but she always said yes.

Finally one night, on the rare occasion he was packed up and ready to go before she was, he set his hand on her shoulder as he walked past her to the door. She reached up from her keyboard to grasp it, their fingers ending up in an awkward tangle that sent a shockwave through to the marrow of his bones.

“Oliver, you don’t have to ask me every night.” Her words are muffled in his head, everything else muted by the feeling of her hand tracing over his. “I’ll text you.”

He just nodded and left, pretending to himself that his dumbfounded reaction was because he had been expecting her to fight him on it. That night though, like always, she texted him. “Home safe.”

Two little words at the end of every day. They helped him breathe a little easier, helped his eyes drift closed on the nights when he actually slept. She’d send the message even if she was annoyed with him, even if she was furious. Those horrible weeks when they didn’t speak, when she asked for space, were only bearable because of how his phone would buzz every night.

_“Home safe.”_

She only forgot a handful times, and he’s not proud of what he did on those nights to make sure she was okay. But most every night, she remembered.

Minutes after he left her standing at her front door, headed out to find some way to erase the memory of Felicity in the hands of the Dollmaker, the Count, the former friend turned Mirakuru monster. Hours after she had stormed from the lair, some variation of “my life, my choice” echoing around them. Days after Cooper resurfaced and she took a few quiet nights for herself. Even those weeks when he suspected she was really sleeping in Ray Palmer’s penthouse.

_“Home safe.”_

* * *

The night he returns from the dead, when Felicity tells him she doesn’t want him to love her like he does and the light in her eyes goes out at his latest betrayal, Oliver goes home to the loft alone. There’s not really any unpacking to do, but after a few minutes spent standing in his old room, wondering why it feels so foreign, he remembers the cell phone he had left behind, switched off and sitting in his desk drawer.

Once the thing powers on and the network catches up, they started to flood in, one after another.

*ping* _“Home safe.”_

*ping* _“Home safe.”_

*ping* _“Home safe.”_

Dozens of messages, one for every night he had been gone. She just kept sending them. For the first time since he fell to his knees at Ra’s al Ghul’s feet, the pain in his heart trumps the one in his side.

* * *

The last message he receives in Nanda Parbat, before the League strips away his belongings and the rest of his identity, is a text from Felicity letting him know they’ve landed back in Starling.

_“Home safe.”_

As the assassins carry out their torture, he imagines that the sound that reverberates through his skull is his phone buzzing, telling him she’s okay.

* * *

The night he finally defeats Ra’s al Ghul, when Felicity saves him once again and lets her eyes light up at his suggestion that they run away together, Oliver goes home to the loft, but not alone. The two of them stop by so he can grab some things, and he opens the same drawer to find the same phone, tossing it on the top of the clothes in the suitcase he hastily throws together.

He plugs it into the wall when they get to her place, letting it charge while she leaves him in the living room to wash away the day. It gives them a few much-needed moments of space that Oliver hates just as fervently as he knows they’re necessary. He runs sports stats in his head to keep himself from thinking about Felicity in the shower, until he realizes that those aren’t thoughts he has to feel guilty about anymore.

The phone comes to life just as she returns to the room with wet hair and rosy skin, her tiny figure drowning in an oversized sweatshirt, and he can barely hear the overlapping notification pings over the desire to pull her into his arms and kiss her forever.

“Those will be me… again,” Felicity admits softly, glancing over at the end table. Oliver thinks she might be blushing if her cheeks weren’t already pink.

He tears his eyes away from her face for just one second, to grab at his phone and look down at the message that repeats its way down his lock screen.

_“Come home safe.”_

_“Come home safe.”_

_“Come home safe.”_

When they finally drag themselves out of bed the next afternoon, it takes almost an hour to find his phone buried in the couch cushions.

* * *

Their first night in the Ivy Town house, Oliver is bone tired, exhausted in the best way from a day of furniture moving and a night of celebratory pizza and beer. He heads to bed before Felicity – in _their master bedroom_ , he can’t stop rolling the words around in his head – taking a quick shower before flopping down on the side of the bed already designated as his.

He listens to her make her way up the stairs and go through her nighttime routine with the good kind of ache in his heart, hoping against hope that he’ll be hearing these same sounds for decades to come. When she finally crawls into to bed beside him, he opens one sleepy eye just a crack, scooting over to pull her into his arms. His phone buzzes on the nightstand, and he doesn’t even think twice about ignoring it.

“You should get that,” she whispers, turning into his arms anyway.

He makes a noise that’s half growl-half protest, muffling it partly into her hair. “Mmm, why?”

“Because.” Her voice sparkles like she’s up to something. “It might be important.”

He rolls away from her with another growl, jamming the side button of his phone. The sudden bright light makes him squint his eyes, but it’s the message on the screen, from her, that makes him tear up.

_“Home safe.”_

* * *

Now that they’re apart, Oliver wishes more than anything that she would do that again, send him a message to tell him she’s okay. If he can’t be by her side, he’d settle for the daily reminder, the reassurance that she’s safe. Maybe a morbid part of him is looking to prove he was right all along about her being better off without him.

But that’s not something he can ask of her now, not something he deserves. Instead, he starts following her home at night, tamping down the way it makes him hate himself even more.

If the team picks up on the pattern, they’re smart enough not to confront him about it. He just finds a reason to be near the Palmer Tech building around eight, or discovers an excuse to head in her direction an hour or two after that. If a bad guy interrupts the plan-that-isn’t-a-plan, he swings by later by when he can, letting the adrenaline front the night work its way out of his bloodstream as he assures himself that Felicity’s fine.

For a while, Oliver really does think it’s working, tells himself that this is a sustainable way to keep existing without her in his life. He believes that he’s fooling everyone, including himself, he even tries not to read too much into the fact that Felicity’s still staying in Palmer Tech’s corporate housing. She hasn’t yet gotten an apartment of her own. The knowledge leaves him just short of hopeful, and no one is the wiser. It’s all working.

Right up until the Bug-Eyed Bandit returns.

That night, he wakes with a start on the steel operating table in the lair, and there’s someone sitting in Felicity’s chair, but it’s not who Oliver wishes it was.

“Ollie!” His sister sounds worried, and it’s pretty proportionate to the pain that shoots through him when he moves to sit. “Don’t try to get up. You’ve got some pretty serious internal injuries.”

He moans and lays back on the table, trying to piece things together. “What time is it?”

“Almost midnight,” Thea tells him. “After we got you stabilized, we decided to take shifts.”

“You can go home,” he tells her stubbornly, even as part of him hopes that she won’t. “ _I_ can go home. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” she mutters, handing him a glass of water and pulling the blanket more snugly around him. “And you’re not going anywhere for a while.”

Thea’s right, and he knows there’s no real way around it. He doesn’t bother asking if Felicity knows he was hurt, not sure either answer would make him feel better if she’s not going to be there. It’s a depressing thought, but it’s been years since he woke up on this table without her worried eyes waiting to meet his.

Oliver doesn’t sleep much that night, even though his body’s begging for it, even after his sister assures him several times over that Felicity and her mother both escaped unharmed and Brie Larven is locked up for good in Barry’s pipeline.

The next day, he has a plan ready to go, waiting until the rest of the team heads out for the evening before taking 30 painful minutes to work his injured body into his Green Arrow suit. On any other night, scaling a rooftop near Felicity’s new place would be a piece of cake. Tonight, it feels akin to climbing back up the mountain Ra’s had pushed him off.

But it’s worth it. Because Felicity’s home. She’s there, where she’s supposed to be, and she’s beautiful and she’s safe. He lets himself watch her for just a moment, watches her cross through the sparsely decorated living room to the windows. She pauses for a few moments, like she’s contemplating something, then she lifts her head and looks him right in the eye.

Oliver’s breath catches in his throat, which hurts even worse than usual tonight. His muscles seize up as they hold eye contact for a long moment, long enough that he’s pretty sure she’s crying. Then, she gives him the tiniest nod, and closes the curtains.

* * *

He shows up at her office the next day, he can’t help himself. But he shows up as Oliver Queen. He wears a tailored suit and a tie she bought for him and schedules an appointment with her assistant, waiting there for maybe an hour until the elevator doors ping open and her cheerful voice precedes her entrance into the reception area.

She stops short at the sight of him, lowering her phone from her ear. “Oliver…”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” His words are rushed and it feels like they’ve gone backwards in time to when she made him more nervous than any villain-of-the-week. “I have an appointment.”

Felicity casts a cursory glance at her assistant before shaking her head with a timid, dismissive smile, like she does when she’s being self-deprecating . “Of course,” she tells him, without meeting his eyes. “Of course, come in.”

He follows her into her office, and when she stays silent, absently shuffling papers on her desk, he figures it’s his opportunity to speak first.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” he starts, words still spinning together. “I’m sorry for… It was an invasion of privacy and I know I have no right and it’s not fair to you and I’m sorry.”

“Well, it seems like you’ve said everything that needs to be said.” Her tone is forced cheerfulness, obvious and fake. It sounds like she’s dismissing him, but it also sounds like her throat is full of unshed tears.

“I just want…” He chokes up mid-sentence, which allows him the chance to reroute it a little, reminding himself once more that he’s not here to ask her for anything. “Felicity, I just need you to be safe.”

“I’m safe,” she assures him. He believes those words more than her next, especially when he sees one traitorous tear slip from the corner of her eye. “I’m fine.”

That night, there isn’t much activity, and Oliver sends everyone home early, too distracted by the effort it takes to keep his unspoken promise and not go looking for her. Every bone in his body aches with the need to see her again, every muscle primed to take him to where he wants to be, every impulse in his heart unable to be quieted by feeble distractions like exercise and the unusually-quiet police scanner. Thankfully though, the tension is short-lived.

At 8:27, his phone pings, and he drops from the salmon ladder to grab it off a nearby computer desk, letting out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding at the message that lights up the screen.

_“Home safe.”_


End file.
